FAO's 27th Regional Conference for
Latin America and the Caribbean ends with a call to create a
world coalition against hunger

Havana, 30 April 2002 -- The 27th
FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean
ended last week with a strong commitment to creating a world
coalition against hunger.

Delegates from
the 31 participating countries agreed on the need to give close
attention to following up on the goals proposed at the World
Food Summit in Rome in 1996. In view of concerns that the
commitment made in 1996 to reduce by the year 2015 the number of
people affected by hunger worldwide to 415 million will not be
fulfilled, the Conference agreed that the aim of the new
coalition will be to secure the participation of governments, as
well as to call upon the creativity and energy of the Latin
American and the Caribbean societies, to ensure that food
security continues to be FAO's first priority.

A decision was also made on a proposal to be tabled
during the World Food Summit:five year later in Rome this June
to establish an inter-governmental working group in FAO to draw
up a Voluntary Code of Conduct on the Right to Food over a two
year period.

Recognizing the need to
mobilize resources for the struggle against hunger, the
Conference reiterated the need for the developed countries to
honour their commitments to dedicate 0.7 % of their Gross
National Product to Official Development Assistance (ODA).

The Conference requested FAO to support the
training of experts to improve the negotiating capacity of
countries in the Region with regards to the rounds of commercial
multilateral negotiations, in order to reduce their disadvantage
in relation to the developed countries.

The Conference also requested FAO to support the
development of programmes focused on women and young rural
people, and to continue to promote South-South cooperation,
particularly through the FAO Special Programme for Food Security
(SPFS).

The Conference also heard the final
Declaration and the Plan of Action approved by the Second
Regional Consultation of Non-Governmental and Civil Society
Organisations that preceded the FAO Conference, attended by
representatives of more than 42 organizations in the region.
This final document gave support to the World F ood Summit:five
years later and states, among other things, that the reasons for
hunger are not so much lack of food production, but rather the
unequal distribution of productive resources and income in the
countries of the region.